Side by Side: Protecting and encouraging threatened activists with unarmed international accompaniment

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:14 -0500

Side by Side

by Liam Mahony

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Since the mid-1980s, human rights groups and other activist organizations being targeted with repressive abuses have been calling on international NGOs to provide them with direct accompaniment by international field workers. These field workers – usually volunteers – spend twenty-four hours a day with threatened activists, at the premises of threatened organizations, in threatened communities or witnessing public events organized by threatened groups. The international presence serves as a deterrent against the use of violence. In order to ensure this deterrence, these international accompaniment organizations are part of transnational networks poised and ready to mobilize political pressure against perpetrators should their volunteers witness any attacks or should their clients be further threatened.

"I can say with certainty that the fact that we are alive today is mainly because of Peace Brigades’ work." – Luis Perez Casas, Lawyer’s Collective Jose Alvear Restrepo, Bogotá, Colombia

International protective accompaniment is the physical accompaniment by international personnel of activists, organizations or communities threatened with politically motivated attacks. Peace Brigades International has been developing this tactic since the mid-1980s, sending hundreds of volunteers into different conflict situations around the world. PBI currently sustains a presence of about 80 people working in several conflicts, responding to requests for accompaniment from all kinds of threatened civil society organizations.

Accompaniment can take many forms. Some threatened activists receive 24-hour-aday accompaniment. For others the presence is more sporadic. Sometimes team members spend all day on the premises of an office of a threatened organization.Sometimes they live in threatened rural villages in conflict zones. This accompaniment service has three simultaneous and mutually-reinforcing impacts. The international presence protects threatened activists by raising the stakes of any attacks against them. It encourages civil society activism by allowing threatened organizations more space and confidence to operate and by building links of solidarity with the international community. And it strengthens the international movement for peace and human rights by giving accompaniment volunteers a powerful first-hand experience that becomes a sustained source of inspiration to themselves and others upon their return to their home country. This tactical notebook will analyze how protective accompaniment works, based on the substantial experience of PBI in Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Sri Lanka and El Salvador. Since the 1990s, numerous other organizations have also provided protective international accompaniment in other settings, modifying the approach according to their particular identity and mission. In the final section of the notebook I will also offer a brief comparative discussion of several of these experiences.

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Reparations

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:13 -0500

Reparations

by Sandra Coliver and Moira Feeney, (CJA)

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In this notebook we learn how civil laws can be used to hold torturers and other human rights abusers accountable, and to gain reparations for survivors. The Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) represents survivors using the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA, dating back to 1789) and the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, which gives both U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike the right to sue human rights abusers who live in or visit the U.S. CJA has effectively used these acts to help end the possibility of abusers using the U.S. as a safe haven, to assist survivors in gaining reparations, and to break the silence that has enabled abusers to live in impunity. This notebook demonstrates how countries with laws similar to the ATCA can put them to work to end such impunity. Activists around the world can consider ways to use their own civil laws, and to target abusers who travel to the U.S. by building collaborations among diverse groups that include activists in the U.S and abroad, refugees, lawyers, and people skilled in using the media

When speaking about his involvement as one of the plaintiffs in Romagoza, Gonzalez, & Mauricio v. Garcia & Vides Casanova, a case against two high ranking Salvadoran generals for torture committed in 1979-1983, Carlos Mauricio said, "I am participating in this case in order to help send a message to military leaders around the world that, if they commit atrocities, they will not be able to visit or live in the U.S. with impunity. They will always have to fear that someone someday may recognize them and bring them to justice. I am involved in this case to try to deter people, especially military people in El Salvador and elsewhere, from committing atrocities in the future. Let me tell you, many military officers in Salvador dream of living in the United States after they retire. My case and other cases are sending a powerful message to them. Resolutions passed by the U.N. General Assembly and reports by human rights organizations are effective in publicizing what happened, but they do not send a strong message to military leaders, who think they are above the law. They may be above the law in their home countries, but these lawsuits tell them that they are NOT above the law in this country."

Since 1980, 18 non-U.S.-born human rights abusers who moved to or were visiting the United States have been successfully sued by their victims in civil proceedings. The victims have been able to use two U.S. laws--one enacted in 1789 as part of the very first Judiciary Act, the other enacted in 1991--that enable victims of certain egregious human rights violations, wherever committed, to bring civil lawsuits in U.S. federal court against those responsible for the violations, so long as they are physically present in the United States.

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Tactical Notebooks, El Salvador

Side by Side: Protecting and encouraging threatened activists with unarmed international accompaniment

Side by Side

Reparations

Reparations